So, the fun and games of a new technology. I had to install Sitecore Azure (documentation); here are some of the issues I found…

First off, when publishing to the local emulator, I received the error:

Create package failed —> System.ApplicationException: Create package is failed —> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.ApplicationException: Method ExpandIncludeFiles doesn’t exist at Sitecore.Azure.Pipelines.CreateAzurePackage.Base.ConfigurationChangesBase.CallStaticMethod(Type type, String methodName, Object[] parameters)

Resolution: I installed the rev. 151119 hotfix, and then upgraded to rev. 161109.

Then I got…

The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.

Resolution: Fixed via advice on http://techitpro.com/sitecore-azure/ .

You will face this error when you are deploying on local emulator and “Build Folder” field value is not short enough. To resolve this error specify the shortest path you can.

You’ll find this here:

Set to something like c:\_az

Next…

The compute emulator had a error: Compute Emulator and the current Emulator client process are running with different privileges. Please restart the emulator and current process with same privileges.

Resolution: I had accidentally, somehow, already started the emulator instances. I stopped them in the task tray.

Next: My website ran, but I got an exception:

Invalid connection string ‘do not remove’.

Resolution: Modified connection strings on my Azure Deployment.

Exception – no connection to Redis.

Resolution: I removed Redis for managing Session State:

In the field Global Web Config Patch, I removed the ‘Distributed Cache’ section. Obviously, in production, I think you’d want this 🙂

And after all of that, it seems to run…